Butanol is an important industrial chemical with a variety of applications, including use as a fuel additive, as a feedstock chemical in the plastics industry, and as a food-grade extractant in the food and flavor industry. Accordingly there is a high demand for butanol, as well as for efficient and environmentally friendly production methods. One such environmentally friendly production method includes the production of butanol utilizing fermentation by microorganisms. During the fermentation and subsequent purification steps, the butanol produced can comprise additional components that are deleterious in fuels prepared by blending the butanol with gasoline, one or more components of gasoline or other hydrocarbon-based fuels. These components can be, for example, one or more of isobutyric acid, isovaleric acid, and isobutyraldehyde. The methods provided herein can reduce the levels of these deleterious components in the butanol compositions produced by fermentation methods, thereby making the butanol more acceptable for end use applications to meet industry or end-user specifications.
The present invention satisfies the need to remove or eliminate additional components from bio-produced butanol based compositions by removing the one or more components from the butanol based compositions.